If you’ve not read The Challenger Sale by Dixon and Adamson, I highly recommend it. Not since Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling have I come across a better sales book. Given that its origins are from the previous financial crisis, it’s more relevant today than in 2011 when published. Why I like it: Science: Like SPIN, the principles outlined […]
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn waited anxiously at Essex County Airport, New Jersey, for the arrival of Carolyn’s sister Lauren Bessette. A rising star at Morgan Stanley, Lauren was running late. They had planned to leave at 6 PM but didn’t take off until 8:39, shortly after sunset. […]
The problem is not learning how to sell, it’s applying what is taught. A lot of sales training is never implemented. Like unused software of yesteryear, it sits on the shelf. Because sales happen in so many different ways, there’s a tendency to overcomplicate things. Sales consultants add to this by telling essentially the same […]
Consider every sales opportunity a ticking time bomb. But, unlike the usual time bomb, this one doesn’t make a sound or trigger an alert. It merely withers and falls off the sales vine. A mistake sometimes made by enterprise salespeople is assuming that because the average sales cycle is long, all sales cycles are long. With this comes the […]
Knowledge is great but a liability when misused. This is sometimes the case during a sales call. Some years ago, a young man was hired to sell cars. He knew nothing about cars and worried about failing. He compensated by asking questions: How much do you typically drive in a year? Do you want a […]
Three mornings a week, I hop on a Spinner and pedal away for 30 to 45 minutes. It’s a great workout and an excellent start to the day. But I go nowhere. Being on a Spinner is like the sales prospect that never closes. A moving target in our forecast, stealthily slipping from one month […]
The origin of this expression goes back to the second world war. Given the critical nature of the D-Day invasion and the fact that many enemy spies had infiltrated England, the allies had to come up with a way of keeping the details secret. “Loose lips sink ships” was their way of reminding service personnel […]
Clarity is imperative in sales. An agenda, from our first meeting until the last, is an important way of sustaining clarity with our prospect and navigating our sales opportunity to closure. Some see an agenda as too formal or old-fashion. Others want to be cool and wait until the meeting to frame the agenda. Some […]
Connecting with a prospect over the phone or a video conference is a good start, but nothing is more effective than a face-to-face meeting. Onsite meetings can be costly, particularly when travel is involved. But, if prepared, the added expense is well worth it. For local prospects, an onsite meeting should be a given part […]
ASSUMING is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the human race, and definitely the biggest on a sales call. It holds the #1 position not just because it stands on its own as a profound truth in life and business, but also because it touches on all other rules in our Enterprise Sales Top TEN […]